It sounds like the balloons used to be smaller, stealthier, and more frequent in the past. Three (known) little guys during the Trump admin.

I don't know if we know that. If we had multiple images from multiple geo-located times we could triangulate the size and altitude.

I'm increasingly convinced that the primary purpose of this was to just flex and start shit.

If that were the case they would have launched from international waters off the coast of California.

If it was a trial balloon (hurrhrurhurhurhrrrr) to see how much political infighting it would cause here in the U.S., well, major success.

you cannot be serious.

Because yeah, if you wanna sniff 4G, you can just develop some hackware and deploy it on a bunch of phones, right?

Right. They did that. ZTE was banned in 2018, Huawei banned in 2019, first balloon we know of flew in 2020. An observation? I was expecting a heapin' helpin' o'bullshit when Russia invaded Ukraine. I'd been dealing with Russian cyberattacks for years but nothing like what Ukraine has been dealing with. And yet - as soon as the VDV got in planes, Russian cyberattacks dropped to zero. It's almost as if the US was letting the Russians fuck around just to see what they had and then as soon as the rubber met the road, the Russians were kicked out of the pool.

It's abundantly clear that the Chinese want to spy on everyone through their technology. What the timeline suggests is that the US shitfit over Huawei has been effective. Probably not 100%? But quite possibly effective enough to encourage the Chinese to try alternative methods of signals intelligence.

Wanna cover a wide swath of area? Rent some cars.

Where "some" and "area" are proportional, and where the odds of discovery multiply with every agent in the field. You wanna talk shitfit, imagine the jingoistic dumpster fire if some Montana state trooper pulled over a Hertz full of Chinese nationals and surveillance gear. Now imagine if, say, multiple states were involved. Fucker Carlson would be screaming for internment camps within minutes.

Having bigger antennae like what the balloon might've been equipped with only makes sense for longer wavelength (than 4G) comms gathering.

Indeed.

Let's be clear: if I'm violating airspace for intelligence gathering, I'm gathering all the intelligence, from DC to light, in every direction. If I'm gonna risk it, I'm gonna amortize that risk.

Chicken/egg: (the balloon has a 30m pylon for solar panels)/(the 30m VLF array is perfect for solar panels).